Just look at that title – Cowboys & Aliens. Going into this movie, everyone knew it would be a tough one to pull off. The mixing of the very grounded and dusty western genre with the fantastic, more imaginative aspects of science fiction writing doesn’t make for a smooth pairing. Some massaging and elbow grease has to be used to make these two genres come together in an entertaining and coherent fashion....

The cinematic equivalent of the cheesy musical mashups on "Glee," "Cowboys & Aiens" fails to live up to its gimmick.By adhering to every cliché in both the western and science-fiction genres, "Cowboys & Aliens" becomes little more than an amusing anecdote. Granted, the flick is far from a failure based on novelty alone but predictability drastically limits its potential....

Over on the aliens side, it's hard to make out faces, but there's no doubt about their place of origin: These slimy, growling, bug-eyed and distinctly non-scary things are straight from central casting.

I believe I've found the perfect word for what Cowboys & Aliens does. It moseys. It's not that its slow and boring, it's just uninteresting and dull. Like a cowpoke moseying through town, its hard to care about the film or any of its characters at all while it saunters on to its inevitable and yet somehow convoluted ending....

This does contain some minor spoilers
Cowboys & Aliens was an awkward movie in terms of anticipation towards its release. Expecting more than what was already given to you in the title would be silly on your part and the premise already seemed really simple yet kind of brilliant since you probably can't name another time aliens were brought in to the western genre....

Let’s start this review for Cowboys & Aliens off shooting from the proverbial hip: When people asked my opinion regarding Cowboys & Aliens prior to screening it, the response was, "that it’s either going to be fantastic or complete garbage....

It really is "Aliens'' on the open plains, "Independence Day'' for the nation's centennial, and what the movie lacks in originality and stick-to-your-ribs Western authenticity, it makes up for in pell-mell multiplex entertainment.

The movie never makes much of a case for its own existence; it's a mediocre western clumsily welded to a mediocre alien shoot-'em-up, and if you allow yourself to think about its treatment of history for as long as one second, you'll feel insulted.

Cowboys & Aliens is one of the silliest movies ever made, but so many otherwise serious people have attached their names to it that, as Arthur Miller wrote in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid.

Two movies (and two genres) for the price of one, this ultimate popcorn movie of the summer is a mishmash by design, in which Bond meets Han Solo/Indiana Jones, though more effective as Western than sci-fi thriller.